Night Pleasures by Sherrilyn Kenyon

Dark Hunter #3 Published: 2002 Pages: 336 "Just because you can doesn't mean you should." - Acheron Parthenopaeus She is Amanda Deveraux, a conservative accountant yearning for normality in a family of witches and psychics, with a twin sister who hunts vampires. Amanda finds herself the target of an attack meant for her twin, and wakes handcuffed to a sexy, blonde stranger. He is Kyrian of Thrace; a Dark-Hunter, an immortal warrior who traded his soul for vengeance upon his enemies. Kyrian spends his eternal days hunting vampires and daimons, his current target is the sinister & deadly daimon Desiderius. And this is their story ... Amanda - "Oh God, I just kissed a vampire!" Kyrian - "Oh Gods, I just kissed a human!" What I love most about these books is the weaving of Greek mythology into the story. Ok the sexcapades are great but I find the mythology completely captivating. The story of Kyrian's tortured past is heartwrenching, as was Julian of Macedon's story in Fantasy Lover. In Night Pleasures we get to re-visit Julian and Grace and their growing family, and Grace's best friend, Selena from book 1 is one of Amanda's sisters. I love tortured heroes, and Kyrian certainly fits the bill and while I didn't have the same emotional connection with Amanda (I found her a bit ditzy and annoying), the chemistry between the two is hot enough to melt an entire polar icecap . I also really liked Nick, Kyrian's squire & of course Acheron, the leader of the Dark-Hunters. The selfless sacrifices Acheron makes for the Dark Hunters has me intrigued and I'm dying to know more about his mysterious relationship with Artemis. Night Pleasures isn't quite up there with Fantasy Lover, the epilogue is terribly cheesy but Sherrilyn Kenyon certainly ramps up the danger elements in this book, and I'm very keen to get to Night Embrace; Talon's story. While this is listed as the 3rd book in the series, it's the 2nd full-length book (Dragonswan, book 2, is a novella of 86 pages which doesn't appear to have much, if any influence on the series). Sherrilyn Kenyon is an international phenomenon and one of the founding authors of the current paranormal craze. Writing as Kinley MacGregor and Sherrilyn Kenyon, if you'd like to read more about this wonderful author, visit her amazing website. I particularly enjoyed reading about how the Dark Hunter series came about. Sherrilyn was researching vampirism for an article, when "she realized that the oldest tales for it went back to ancient Greece. In that instant, she remembered that Apollo was the god of the sun and of plagues and that Artemis, his twin sister, was the goddess of the moon. The entire concept of Dark-Hunter was born and it would be forever tied to ancient Greece." See my review of book 1 - Fantasy Lover